The main focus of this research is not on its individual components but the synthesis of these individual elements into something which engages in placemaking on multiple levels simultaneously. Conceptually following the lead of the aforementioned Date not remembered and (almost always is nearly enough), my thoughts on how repetition could provide necessary structure to ‘sonic placemaking’ were immediately put to work alongside exploration of place and its transformation through the use of technology in two paired works which followed (almost always is nearly enough) in summer 2022: phantom islands, saltwater superstructures and welcomed not belonging. These pieces ask two main questions about my process: First, how do the elements chosen to represent a place reflect its transformation into music and the communication of the place to an audience? And second, how do musical structures influence the execution of extra-musical concepts?
In the summer of 2022, I was asked to write a new work for piano and harp for the 2022 Yarn/Wire Institute & Festival (curated by New York City-based quartet Yarn/Wire), which became phantom islands, saltwater superstructures (with the addition of myself controlling electronics alongside Yarn/Wire pianist Laura Barger and New York City-based harpist Kathryn Sloat). Preliminary conversations with the group specifically related to my interest in translating physical space into music, with an instigation to use my exploration of the Netherlands — specifically that of the country’s coastline — as a driving force of inspiration for the piece, conceptually bringing the west coast of Europe to the east coast of the United States for its New York City premiere.
The coast became a pivotal part of this process. I spent most of my life centered in a city of about 15,000 residents on the East Coast of Florida. The coastline was an essential component of my upbringing and existence, with dunes, plants, trees, and animal life all proportioned in a specific manner that I could not forget. I was surprised to move to The Hague and find that the beach almost constituted a sort of mirror image to the ones I had grown up near, an uncanny resemblance broken up only by hills and its northwest alignment. What made this place truly different from the ones I had grown up with? I saw few differences and could hear few differences, so instead, I sought to listen to and document this place in a new way outside the visual or audible norms.
When working to create an audio document of a space, one might note that perhaps the easiest and first instinct for any field recordist would be to focus on a traditional element of the space. For a beach, it’s reasonable to approach a standard audio field recording of ambience, or perhaps even a hydrophone recording of the water, in order to get a “representative” document of the space. It was for this reason that I instead asked the question: What information can we get from the abnormal elements of this space? We can look at a beach and see that it consists of sand, plants, water, sea life, and beach-goers. But what about that which we cannot see? Is it not still a part of the equation? For me, these elements are what bridge the gap between knowing a space and knowing a place, knowledge that is unlocked when we search for the underlying nature of something. With this goal in mind and building on my recent background working with electromagnetic field recordings, I explored The Hague’s Zuiderstrand beach with a powerful electromagnetic field microphone and found that this natural, organic space was filled with unseen activity — electromagnetic interference constantly changing and transforming, sound as strong and powerful as any crashing wave, gust of wind, or bird call around me was. The origin of the sound is almost as fascinating as the sound itself; the presence of so much technological interference in a natural space raises more questions about the way that humans have changed nature than this research is prepared to answer.
As said by Michael Pisaro-Liu, “The world we see looks stable, but the world we learn to hear…is in constant flux.” In a fitting example from the 1999 film The Matrix, he notes:
The most vivid scene in The Matrix is when Neo begins to see the world transform before his eyes, as it bends and flexes, and then changes to streams of numbers. It is vivid because we know this is the case: the world is different from the evidence given by our direct perception. In The Matrix the illusion of the world is maintained by a computer program, hence, when Neo sees the numbers, he is seeing a real world not apparent to others. This is a relatively simple way of showing that things are not as they seem, that there’s another reality hidden in what we think we perceive.1
The reference to The Matrix as a document itself aside, the driving force for the development of phantom islands, saltwater superstructures was the exploration of this same concept: Objects of all kinds, from large physical spaces to minute singularities, are fluid in nature. In what ways can one’s artistic approach represent this fluidity?
The nearly 30-minute recording taken on the Zuiderstrand formed the basis of the piece, with sections of the recording edited down to 17 minutes (along with subtle processing for the purpose of sound quality) and played through transducers placed on the piano and harp.2 I approached the sonification of the space through two avenues: The field recording itself, and a notated translation of a spectral analysis of the field recording, which formed the basis of the music for the piano and harp. As the players performed a sonified version of the given space, the transducers played the recorded version of the space back into the instruments — in a way, creating a hybrid artificial-conceptual feedback loop between the two.
Two sections of the piece are perhaps the most important for my approach to representing the fluidity of this space: The central (mm. 27 to mm. 43, lasting around five minutes in a performance) and closing (mm. 63 to mm 67, lasting around two minutes). To develop a “space in flux,” I chose an approach that has some elements in common with what some have deemed “temporal extension” or “pattern extension.” One notable example of this characterisation is scholarship about the works of composer Morton Feldman, such as this consideration from music theorist Dora A. Hanninen:
Feldman’s late works are characterised by patterns that acquire temporal extension through repetition. Significantly, in late Feldman pattern extension tends to involve not literal extension but semblances of repetition – numerous, often uncoordinated, adjustments in duration, timbre, and pitch. Feldman’s penchant for pattern extension by near repetition poses a distinct cognitive challenge: the proliferation of near repetitions frustrates attempts to prioritise events by distinctive features, and thereby to categorise, or even remember, individual instances.3
A key for my interaction with similar ideas to these is that near-repetition and literal repetition play into each other in such a way that the presence of one can cast doubt on the nature of the other. As previously discussed, on the surface, a space may appear to be in stasis even as we know that it is in constant movement and states of change: This is represented in the piece by the relationship between the players and the electronics. In the central section, the players repeat the same pitches and ascending gestures constantly in compressed and expanded fashions — much along the lines of Feldman’s “numerous, often uncoordinated, adjustments in duration, timbre, and pitch.” These almost-repetitions are then encased in a literal box of repetition, repeating 14 measures four times. The recorded material is played at the same time as the notated material, but it is allowed to morph and grow naturally where the notated material continually repeats.
In my view, these are two perspectives of the same documentation which have simply been allowed to develop and grow at different paces. For the players, the enclosure is the same while its details slightly shift from moment to moment, always repeating the same gestures in new ways. However, around it, the other perspective of the same space swirls, changing and transforming itself. The two layers are constantly at odds with each other, but conceptually the same: a space that is somehow both constantly changing and constantly remaining at rest. I had watched the beach remain in its calm loops — waves crashing, the wind blowing, and birds calling with general regularity — while I listened to its hidden sounds transfigure in a secret world. A place is not caught in time and is not defined by one linear experience, but by a collection of them; in using multiple time-scales at once, the world of phantom islands, saltwater superstructures similarly is not defined by one linear experience in its transformation of The Hague’s Zuiderstrand. According to Jayna Brown, this act of changing our understanding of place and building better places for one another requires this shift in thinking, even if only available on the smallest of scales:
I suggest that we see and feel our way not into a future but into an altogether different spatiotemporality that is not discoverable along a human timeline. Utopia is inaccessible because it requires a complete shift in how we understand time. It is not accessible in standard linear time or in normative spaces. As we open ourselves up to the possibility of new ways of being, we must be brave enough to accept the idea that there are temporalities and spatialities beyond human imagining.4
This concept goes a step further in the companion piece, the fixed media work welcomed not belonging. This piece, written concurrently with phantom islands, offers another perspective of the same field recording. Rather than using the recording as material as in phantom islands, I instead used the unedited recording in full and processed on top of the raw audio, always maintaining the original while augmenting and reworking elements of its presentation. This process highlighted the document in a completely different manner: Rather than using the place as material for a piece of music, the place is itself amplified fully. The music benefits from this as well, as the natural structure of the field recording provides a strong musical form (beyond the captivating sound which comes from an EMF recording).
